Point of Perfection
by almost-never
Summary: [One-shot] "I'm the point of perfection and I'm not beautiful anymore...I can never say 'I am Heather Sinclair' because I haven’t been me for awhile to remember what it was like when I was myself." The twisted insight of the ever-elusive Heather Sinclair.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own, you don't sue – we're all happy.

**A/N:**This is another one-shot, featuring the ever-elusive Heather Sinclair (pay careful attention and you'll notice that her name's mentioned once every few episodes but she never really appears...). Read and review!

**Point of Perfection**

I used to think I was beautiful. I used to believe a lot of things, actually; tooth fairies, Easter bunnies, – shows how much I know.

I like to sit here, in my dead sister's room. It's a nice place to think – to reflect. To imagine.

Hannah was an artist of every sort. She took art lessons, did photography in her spare time, was self-taught in six different instruments...and she would make the most beautiful images swim around in my mind as I watched/listened/felt. Her art was never flawless (there'd always be a hint of a smudge or a blot) but it was at the peak – the point of perfection. And she loved me; I loved her – deeper than most other sibling relationships of which I knew. Her room was plastered with framed photos, paintings, sketches; all me.

She died a few years ago; I was thirteen, she was sixteen. Mother got cleaners to scour away all the blood but she forbade them to take off the art. They still hang there now, a little brown at the edges with dusty glass frames with the faint scent of disinfectant mixed with the musty staleness of uninhabited rooms still lingering around.

I looked so different back then. The way I looked in all those pictures, I mean. I was beautiful – short messy hair, curved lips, crooked smile, sharp – and slightly slanted – nose. I wasn't perfect – that was Hannah with her kaleidoscope of wide eyes and colours and sharp contrast.

And when she died, there was no perfection left. A conglomeration of perfection washed away and left with a sad family.

I needed to be perfect.

I needed to be.

I needed to.

I needed.

I.

I did it all. I – the underdog beauty. I did it all. A little plastic here, and little plucking there, and maybe some suction if I wasn't too grossed out.

Soon I was the talk of the school. I was the candy-eyed. I was content.

And years later, at aged sixteen, I'm the butt of all of Paige Michalchuk's lame jokes, still the candy-eyed, with no real smile and an artificial existence.

And I'm the point of perfection.

I'm the point of perfection and I'm not beautiful anymore. I'm simply...just. My name is Heather Sinclair and I exist. But I can never say 'I am Heather Sinclair' because I haven't been me for awhile to remember what it was like when I was myself. Short messy hair, curved lips, crooked smile, sharp – and slightly slanted – nose...all gone. Evaporated into the air after the last surgery – a nose job – and replaced by a visage and a body that was supposed to be better but was really just so, so much worse.

You can't turn back time.

I would know; I've tried many times.

And whenever I sit in Hannah's room like right now, I see myself as free and clumsy, being the essence of me – the way I was when flawed perfection was already there for someone else – my sister – to wear.

Of course, that was back then. It was before I needed to change myself to fill the empty – but not gone – space of my sister.

So here I am, poised and slim and sitting cross-legged, all balanced like the way I had practiced, trying to see the shell that's supposed to be me clearly in the tall mirror in the corner of the room through all that vision-obscuring dust, not caring, _for once_, about getting dirty and cramped.

I don't get up and try to obtain a better view. I sit. I sit and wait for the dust to settle – wait to see what is left of Heather Sinclair and the contrast between Beautiful and Perfect.

The truth is the dust isn't all that thick. I can see the mirror fine. It's wooden and slightly scratched with a small smack of peeling paint staining the upper-left corner of the glass.

I can see the mirror fine – I just can't see me.

I try to smile at the mirror.

Straight nose.

Long, straight, in-place hair.

Double-lidded eyes.

Thin, arched eyebrows.

High cheekbones.

Pink mouth.

Even, almost sparkling teeth.

Grace.

Perfection.

I am perfect and prosthetic all over and I can only see a flickering shadow of Heather Sinclair behind my soulless gaze, surrounded by wistful, beautiful memories of me, all grinning/pouting/glaring/teasing at me behind a film of Past from various places on the wall.

I see tears shining on a crumpled and blurry face suddenly and I feel more than I have in years. Ever since I was alone in our cold mansion with a bloody Hannah (still with colours and sharp contrast – but no wide eyes – her eyelids clamped and wrinkled against her skin, squeezed shut as though still in pain) at my feet, a crimson-stained piece of loose-leaf paper still clenched in her white hand and a dirty knife looking evil and tainted just out of reach. Ever since perfection disappeared.

Was she ever happy, being the point of perfection? I was never. I was happy being Beauty and content being Perfection for the first few days.

Hannah was perfect inside. I am perfect on the exterior. I have nothing inside that is perfect or beautiful. And that gives me a little strange twinge in my pit, just a little one.

Through the flying clouds of dust, I see orange and pink and green in the sky. Clashing colours still creating a beautiful gradation. I hear the sound of my father's sporty red car crunch on the gravel as he pulls up into our driveway, followed by the _choock!_ of a key being jammed into a lock by an unwary hands.

Quickly, I push myself up and erase any signs of feeling and tears from my face. Looking into the mirror one last time, I see cold perfection, her head tilted slightly upward and her mouth set at a firm line.

_Good evening, Father,_ I whisper to myself as a rehearsal of lines I repeat every day.

I clap the dust away from my hands and readjust my clothing, choosing to forget my burst of feeling half an hour before until my next rendez-vous with what is supposed to be myself in my sister's room. I close the door and hear a small click of the door shutting itself completely before my father's voice booms its arrival.

I rove my hands over my face, feeling the part in my lips and the hair on my brows.

It's foreign.

I stare at the door with apathetic eyes and walk away, poised and straight-backed as always.

I can never be me again.

I am alien all over.

I am the point of perfection.

**The End**


End file.
